9 Ways to Hide How Broke You Are When You Go Out This Weekend

You mix up your paycheck schedule and your dealer’s schedule again. Ha, classic drug habit. Now you’re left with two weeks’ supply of muscle relaxers but aren’t getting paid again until next Friday. Given, you now do have a bevy of pills and could initiate a very solo, very Trainspotting weekend, but you nix that idea. You’re kinda-sorta remembering how that movie progresses and want to keep your “acquired taste” a light, amusing fun-tivity, not a heavy, debilitating addiction.

Still, there’s no cash and, unless that one bartender’s working, these pills can’t be exchanged for drinks and boozy, social fun. Re-selling your wares isn’t practical. You don’t have the enabled network your guy does, plus parting with them just makes trouble for next week. Yet whether it’s impressing a ladyfriend who’s, albeit, shallow whom you’re trying to get deep inside or just continuing to cultivate an aura of an eccentric billionaire in training, embodying destitution is not an option this weekend.

Admission is not acceptable (1). Once people know you’re broke everything starts getting blamed on you—just ask the city of Detroit. Motive’s suddenly become ascribed. Post-confession, people are quick to pounce on, publicize, and deride your insolvency every time a beer goes missing, money is misplaced, or a trip to sell blood plasma is suggested. Never admit your situation, but rather use apathy (2) to justify your inactions. Explain that you’re good for it, but don’t want to run out for their owed liquor/cash/cheeseburgers because you don’t feel like putting on pants today and because you just started another episode of Dance Moms.

Aloof and indifferent is the ticket. Fabricate non-fiscal reasons to decline things (3). “Yeah, I would go to that buffet with you guys, but there’s no room in my schedule today for three hours of diarrhea.” Keep the excuses in your wheelhouse. If you’re like me and a lifestyle of violent dumping chose you, a justification like that can work. Others may opt for something like, “Ooo, no can do on the buffet; that’s a popular haunt for the morbidly obese and I can’t risk running into that pre-diabetic, disgustingly wooly mammoth I slipped it in last month.”

Scrounging up just enough to get you through the weekend can work also. People will figure you’re just breaking off the tip of your monetary iceberg (4) when, in actuality, you’ve just dropped 40% of all of you liquid assets for an $11 pitcher. Covertly sponging up money can be tough. Returning cans, the homeless mans’ never-ending goldmine, is an option if you’re in the right state (5). There’s the Bubbles option, The Wire or Trailer Park Boys, of scrap metal yards or reselling shopping carts respectively (6). Don’t overlook Cragislist (7) either, especially if you’re down to work odd jobs, do sex anonymously, or be potentially murdered by a traumatized veteran and subsequently stuffed down a sewer.

A little money can help, but, overall, take a lesson from Bernie Madoff or MC Hammer and create the illusion of wealth this weekend. Dress a little nicer than you normally would (8). Don’t make it mid-life crisis obvious, but people will unconsciously pick up on small, subtle differences. “Oh, he’s wearing an ironed shirt? Yeah, he’ll totally be good for a round” or “Justin, is that a wifebeater that doesn’t smell like a butcher’s dumpster? Yeah, I figured you had paid for that cup.”

The system can be gamed. Keep your head down, skirt direct questions, and at all costs, avoid obvious indicators (9) of your insufficient funds, like holding cardboard signs with “God Bless” scrawled on them, carrying bindles, or eating out of open cans of beans.